Page:Four Plays of Aeschylus (1908) Morshead.djvu/246

216

Warn'd and foreknowing shall ye go,

Through your own folly trapped and ta'en,

Into the net the Fates ordain—

The vast, illimitable pain!

[Thunder and lightning.

Hark! for no more in empty word,

But in sheer sooth, the world is stirred!

The massy earth doth heave and sway,

And thro' their dark and secret way

The cavern'd thunders boom!

See, how they gleam athwart the sky,

The lightnings, through the gloom!

And whirlwinds roll the dust on high,

And right and left the storm-clouds leap

To battle in the skyey deep,

In wildest uproar unconfined,

An universe of warring wind!

And falling sky and heaving sea

Are blent in one! on me, on me,

Nearer and ever yet more near,

Flaunting its pageantry of fear,

Drives down in might its destined road

The tempest of the wrath of God!

O holy Earth, O mother mine!

O Sky, that biddest speed along

Thy vault the common Light divine,—

Be witness of my wrong!

[The rocks are rent with fire and earthquake, and fall, burying in the ruins.